How many times have you sat in a bar, at a game or even at home and argued the merits of one player over another? A great way to start a fight or make a new friend is to ask the simple question, "Who is the better ..."

The B/R NFL 1,000 is here to settle the arguments, giving you a clinical assessment of the top 1,000 players in the NFL as teams prepare for the 2012 season. Finally, we can say not just who the best quarterback is, but who the best right guard is. And the 32nd best. Fans will see where each of their teams' players fit in the NFL hierarchy.

The task of scouting, grading and ranking the players at every position was not an easy one. Thankfully, the NFL has a program called NFL Rewind that greatly aided film study. Even so, hundreds of hours were spent watching football, pen in hand, to grade the best players in the game today.

For each position, we decided on 10 key criteria. Those traits were then scouted and scored on a scale of 1-10 for each player. From there, it was a simple matter addition to set our exclusive rankings, with each player accumulating a total score of up to, if there were a perfect player, 100. Over the span of the series, we'll reveal the rankings at each position, with a detailed slide on each player.

The opinions, grades and rankings were all decided only after watching at least three games with each player—in most cases many more.

We hope you'll enjoy our take on who the best NFL players at each position are. To cap off the series, we'll publish the ultimate ranking, across all positions: the B/R NFL 1,000. Join the discussion on Twitter with me (@nfldraftscout), using #br1000.